


World's fair.

by orange_crushed



Series: Skinned knees 'verse. [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks young, impossibly young, like the boy who told her ghost stories over battery-powered flashlights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	World's fair.

It is the day of the fair. The town is out in cotton dresses and short-sleeve shirts rolled up, eating anything that comes fried on a stick and jostling each other in line. Rose is standing by the electric swings, transfixed by the lights, sweat rolling down between her bra and the zipper of her dress. She has enough change for a coke and a hot dog or three rides on the swings, and it's really too hot for arithmatic.

"Hi Rosie," someone says, behind her. She turns to find Jack grinning broadly, arms folded across his chest. He nods at the swings. "You want to go for a spin ?" He manages to make that sound a little risqué but the lines of his football-sculpted shoulders are relaxed, his posture slouched and boyish. Puppyish. Jack practically wags for her attention.

"I was thinking about it." She swipes a limp strand of hair out of her eyes. "Could use a nice strong breeze."

Jack pays and they take two rides each, laughing, her skirt bunched up between her legs for modesty's sake and her ankles bare and her hair in a cloud around her, tangling in her mouth. Jack helps her out of the swing and they walk around in a dizzy circle for a minute, still giggling.

"Let me win you a teddy bear."

"I don't need a stuffed teddy, Jack Harkness," she says, rolling her eyes. "And don't bother finishing that thought," she adds, pointing at his half-open mouth and the dirty suggestion about to tumble out of it. He clamps his jaw shut and makes a little half-bow, his eyes still swimming with mischief. He's not a bad boy, Jack, though he pretends to be. He's not like the other guys on the team who would pass her in the hall and try to stare down her sweater front. No, Jack is a gentleman in some strange old-fashioned way, not like some people she could name. Some people who've talked up and down about promises and futures and places to be and things to see, some people who ran off after graduation for a job in the city and haven't so much as written a single- "Oh," she says, and stops, staring down the midway. He is standing at a booth, her- that boy. Him. Her hand goes to her throat, to press down the sudden trembling pulse. "Oh."

"Hey, isn't that-" Jack peers at him, and goes quiet. "It sure is." He sighs. "You'd better go and say hello." Her cheeks redden, though with pride or anger or embarassment, she doesn't know.

"I'm just fine where I am," she says. "Weren't you about to go win me something with that manly arm of yours ?" Jack smiles at her, sad under the perfect stretch of teeth and the shining eyes.

"You know why I'm good at football ?" he asks. It's not bragging, really, to put it so mildly. Jack's the reason they won the state championships two years running. She shakes her head. "Because I can leave the competition on the field," he tells her. She stares at him for a moment and then leans forward to kiss his cheek.

"Thank you, Jack."

"Take care, Rosie," he says, and walks away, between the tents. Rose watches him go and then looks back down the path.

He is taller, somehow, this boy, though it's just a feeling. It's only been since June. His hair is piled in brushed-up heaps on the top of his head, sticking out like a broken pine cone. He's changed his wire-frame glasses to a pair of thick plastic ones. They're a little crooked. His hands are jammed into his pockets and he's such a skinny thing, really, she always notices that in the summer when the sweaters and coats peel off. He's got nothing on Jack's solidness but he's there, filling up his little hole in space, his elbows jammed out and his gaze on her. She shivers under his sight, physical as a touch, and wonders where he's been, what he's seen. How he's different, when she is so very much the same.

"Rose," he says. He smiles at her, under the lights of the ferris wheel, and his eyes are wet. "You look beautiful."

"I'm sweaty and tired," she says, without thinking. "Why are you here ?" He gapes at her.

"Why am I- I wouldn't miss it," he says, defensively. "You don't actually think that I'd miss it. I've never missed it. Have faith, Rose."

"The ferris wheel ?" She stares up and remembers last summer and the summer before that and all the summers stretching behind them in memory, all the turns around the wheel and the night air on their faces. "You came back to ride the ferris wheel ?" He nods. Something wells up in her throat, and it isn't anger. "You idiot," she says. She reaches for his hand and it meets her halfway, like always. Their fingers fit together. They must've grown that way. "Fine, then, you're buying."

They get a blue car, flashing bulbs on the trim, and when the mechanical wheel swings them up into the darkness the sounds of the fair mute and soften, turning into music far below. She loves that feeling, the first moment when they leave the ground. The takeoff. Flight. He puts his arm up and around her and she leans into him, pressing her face into the plain boy-smell. There are other things, too: soap and rubber and printing ink. He talks into her ear about work, the assignments that have him running all over the city. He apologizes three times for not writing. He describes the ache of buildings that nearly touch the sky, the car exhaust and smoke, the men in rumpled suits on the train, the printing presses that roll along like rivers of words and prayers and wonder, the endless questions he is finally praised for asking. He spills over with energy and her heart leaps and shrinks. "It sounds wonderful." She closes her eyes. "You'll be going back, then."

"Absolutely." He pushes his glasses back up his nose. "But not for very long. I'm going to have a new assignment."

"New assignment ?"

"Travel writer," he says, with such joy that she feels a palpable thrill run through her. His dream- their dreams, once- coming true. The world at the end of his pen, unfolding in color and sound and sensation. She feels truly happy for him, and also unspeakably lost. "It won't always be glamorous, Rose. Plenty of nights we'll sleep in tents or have to negotiate in languages I don't know yet. But we'll be out there, really out there. The Pyramids, Finland, Scotland, the Riviera at dusk and dawn and music in the street in Barcelona-"

"We ?" she interrupts, finally catching it. "Did you say _we_ ?"

"If you like," he says, trying to sound casual. "I'm asking. Really asking. If you want. Only if you want." When she looks up he's lit from behind, by the bulbs. He looks young, impossibly young, like the boy who told her ghost stories over battery-powered flashlights. He is staring down at her and sitting perfectly still. She knows now that she has the power to break his heart. And she knows other things too, in that second, true and lovely things that have existed long before them and will live long after. Things she has probably always known. She leans up to kiss him, really kiss him, for the first time.

"Better with two," she says, and presses her mouth to his.


End file.
